4. Researchers have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system called Ithaca to help fill in missing words in ancient writings. Ithaca is designed to help historians restore (复原) the writings and identify when and where they were written.
Many ancient populations used writings, also known as inscriptions, to record different parts of their lives. The inscriptions have been found on materials such as rock, ceramic and metal. They often contained valuable information about how ancient people lived and how they built their societies.
But oftentimes, the objects containing such inscriptions have been damaged over the centuries. This left major parts of the inscriptions missing and difficult to identify and understand. In addition, many of the inscribed objects were moved from areas where they were first created. This makes it difficult for scientists to discover when and where the writings were made.
Ithaca serves as a technological tool to help researchers repair missing inscriptions and judge the true origins (起源) of the records. The researchers, led by Alphabet's AI company DeepMind, said it trained Ithaca on the largest collection of data containing Greek inscriptions. Feeding this data into the system is designed to help the tool use past writings to predict missing letters and words in damaged inscriptions.
"When historians work on their own, the success rate (率) for restoring damaged inscriptions is about 25 percent. But when humans teamed up with Ithaca, the success rate jumped to 72 percent, " said Assael, a research scientist with DeepMind.
The team is now working on other versions of Ithaca trained on other ancient languages. DeepMind has launched a free tool based on the system for use by researchers, educators, museum workers and the public.